TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (59 page)

I looked for landmarks. In my mind I drew a line from the dead jacaranda tree, where Rosa had first gone down on her knees to me. to a thick clump of barrel cactus on the far shore. Off to the right, about a mile away, I spotted a gutted mud hut and a stand of maguey. The maguey would be there long after the hut was gone. A channel of frothy green water snaked out between the sandy patches, almost as far as the middle of the lake.

“Let’s ride through that. If each of us carries a sack, it will make six trips. I’ll tell you when to let go.”

Julio blushed. “Not too deep, Tomás. I can’t swim.”

“Ride close to me. Candelario?”

“In my past life I was a dolphin.”

“Rodolfo?”

“It’s of no consequence.” He meant that, unlike the others, there was no possibility of his falling off his horse.

Julio and I trotted out first, our stirrup irons nearly touching, an unwieldy flour sack full of gold clutched in our arms behind the saddle horns. The bubbly green water was more shallow than I had realized, and the horses were no deeper than their hocks and knees. I wanted them at least belly-deep before we dumped the load. I veered off toward one of the sand-colored patches to try my luck, and Maximilian nickered with fright. I had to put steel into him, and even then he snorted and tried to buck. The gold swayed, almost fell.

Julio called sharply. “Tomás, it’s quicksand!”

Maximilian had smelled it. There was a sucking sound—thick, juicy and evil. One hoof and fetlock of his foreleg came up brown, caked with the treacherous gumbo. I wheeled him quickly and kicked my way out of there, trying to soothe him. Up on the Brazos I had seen a remuda of horses and a herd of twenty cattle go down in quicksand in the space of five minutes. We had saved some, but the rest died pitifully.

I yelled hoarsely to warn Candelario and Fierro who were behind us—they might have seen but not understood. Candelario waved, then spoke some words to Fierro.

Maximilian plunged deeper, up to his ribs in the foul-smelling green water. Jerking my head to the right, I sighted the maguey in a reasonably parallel line to the far shore of the lake. “Here!” I shouted.

I heaved my sack of gold off to the right. It struck the surface with a splash that soaked my Levi’s—then sank swiftly, the ripples spreading. I heard another splash to my left as Julio let go. A cloud of mud rose from the bottom, and the sack was nowhere to be seen.

One by one we carried the sacks to the middle of the lake, then dumped them. Maximilian’s hoofs threw up a fountain of water that made a rainbow against the rising sun. Each trip took more than ten minutes—five out, five back. My mind wandered, and I began to daydream of Elisa. In the rainbow of water I saw her neat breasts, her lemon-colored hair, her sandy bush and red lips dripping honey. The musky salt smell of the lake bottom was like the smell that came from between her thighs. Then I conjured up Rosa—brown flesh covered with a sparkle of sweat, the candle glow making a patch of light on her brown forehead, a curve of hip … and I saw the photograph again: the two silhouettes frozen at the gate in parting. My pecker stiffened in my pants.

I neared the shore and shook my head like a dog, disgusted with myself.

Julio, at my side, turned and gazed back at the lake. He had left his hat on the shore, so that he shaded his eyes against the sun with one hand. When he hissed my name I twisted in the saddle.

White cat’s-paws rippled the water. Candelario was coming toward us, saddle empty of the last sack, head thrown back, a black and bulky shape against the glare. Farther out, chest-deep in the lake, legs out of sight but thrashing and churning up mud, Fierro’s sorrel neighed terribly.

Rodolfo clutched the sack of gold with one arm. His quirt was in the other hand, and he was whipping the horse’s belly. I couldn’t see his face.

“That’s green water…”

“With quicksand under it,” Julio said.

Rodolfo had drifted to the left to find a fresh place where he could dump the last sack. The channel veered there, narrowed, then must have deepened, and the mud stirred by the horse’s hoofs had hidden the telltale patch of brown.

I spurred toward him, with Julio following.

“Rodolfo!” I yelled.
“Drop the gold!”

He couldn’t hear me, or he was too absorbed in whipping his horse. He was locked into his stirrups and wouldn’t let go. Now I realized that he couldn’t swim. His back was toward us, his broad shoulders hunched over the withers. The horse was squirting piss. Stifle and tail vanished from sight, and he sank even lower.

We reached Candelario, who sat unmoving. I had lived in a bog camp with cattle—I knew what to do. Taking Maximilian out there would be murder, for he could sink into the goo as easily as the sorrel. Fierro was about thirty feet away from us.

I kicked my feet loose from the stirrups, bent to wrench one boot loose—then pushed it at Julio.

“What are you doing, Tomás?”

“They’ll fill with sand!” I worked the other boot loose. “Take it. goddammit!”

“I can’t hear you,” Julio said.

I yelled at Candelario. “Sling a rope around me!”

Fierro thrashed in the water, hip-deep, and the sorrel screamed with mounting terror.

Candelario leaned close to lay a hand on my arm. “Tomás.” he said calmly, “this is no loss. The man is still your enemy, no matter what. Leave him be. No one but us will know.”

They had always despised Fierro, and to them that must have been reason enough to let him die. In the corral at Torreón, Fierro had called death a reasonable answer to a generally unsatisfactory life. And yet, as the lake closed round him, he struggled to preserve it.

I dropped the boots and vaulted from the saddle into the cold water. Wriggling out of my Levi’s, I snatched the rope off the horn.

Fierro’s sorrel was braying like a burro, head pointed toward the sun at an impossible angle. Only his loins and croup showed above the bubbling brown surface. Fierro whipped him about the ears with the quirt. He still forked the saddle, and the water had reached his crotch.

I shook out the rope to build a loop, then doubled it, keeping the noose open. I couldn’t save the horse with a head ketch, even though I knew Fierro would hang in the saddle until hell froze over. The only way to haul a horse out of bog was by the tail, which was strong enough to take the strain. But the tail was long gone under water. A head ketch would likely break his neck. I had to go for Fierro himself.

His back was turned. I whirled the rope by the honda over my left shoulder, then to the right and up over my head and tossed out a hooleyann with a corkscrew roll. It whirred through the bright air and dropped neatly over Fierro’s shoulders, pinning his arms. I planted my stockinged feet into the cold gumbo, took a fast dally around my thigh and yanked as hard as I could. Fierro flew backwards out of the saddle. I hadn’t meant to do any damage, but I was in a hurry and it happened that way. I felt him stick for a moment in the stirrups—then he shot free.

The sack of gold thumped off, kicking up a fountain of spray. At the same time I heard a whirring over my own head, and a wide loop settled around me and snugged tight against my ribs. The knot bit hard into the soaking wet shirt.

Glancing back, I met Julio’s grin; he took a dally with the other end around the horn. Candelario was twirling a second rope in case Julio had missed.

The rest was easy: they hauled on me, and I hauled on Rodolfo. He came bouncing backwards through the water like a hooked whale, swallowing a few pints of muck and brine on the way. When his head popped up above the surface, although he was nearly out cold. I could hear him sputtering and gasping, but then he went back under the next second. It might have been funny if that poor sorrel hadn’t gone under at the same time. Some obscene gaseous bubbles floated on top of the murky cloud where his head had been, and then they subsided. He was in his grave. Rodolfo had been luckier.

I beached him at last near the jacaranda tree. After I caught my breath I knelt astride his back and began to pound the water out of his lungs. The others crowded round, interested now. My mending ribs ached again from Julio’s rope, and the turn I had taken around my naked thigh had skinned off enough white hide for a lady’s purse. Water dribbled from Rodolfo’s slack mouth.

Candelario vanished from my sight for a few minutes. When he came back he had my boots and trousers, slimy with mud.

Rodolfo vomited green water into the dust. His eyes rolled in his head. His face looked like the peaks of the Pulpito after it had snowed, with a touch of blue twilight color. He worked himself up on one elbow, trying to reach down toward his boots. But he fell back, turning even paler. His voice was barely a whisper.

“My leg…”

He wore riding boots that reached almost to his crotch. When Candelario started to tug the left one off, Rodolfo let out a howl, then bit his lip until he drew blood. Julio pulled out a hunting knife and slit the leather down to the shin. He worked the boot off more gently than I thought he would, while Rodolfo’s shoulders jerked from the pain. The foot hung at a crazy angle.

“The ankle is broken,” Julio muttered.

Coming out of the stirrup it had jammed, then snapped—the kind of fall that every cowhand feared. Rodolfo rested for a while, getting his breath back, staring at his ruined ankle. Then his tawny eyes fixed on mine. “It was your rope…”

I didn’t want that man owing me a damned thing. “I didn’t save your life,” I reminded him. “I just postponed your death.”

Later that morning we held a council of war. Our soldiers had come back from Ascensión, unable to find either pulque or a woman, and they sat around by the wagon, smoking cornstalk cigarettes and waiting for us to give some orders. Rodolfo was flat on his back under the jacaranda tree, beyond earshot, grunting every now and then like a hog. We had no painkillers, and none of us knew how to set an ankle bone. If we didn’t get him quickly to a doctor, he would wind up a cripple.

“We can’t leave him,” I said, and the others gloomily nodded.

Candelario wanted to head south to Casas Grandes, leave him there with a doctor, then ride for the Pulpito and try to catch up with the Division. That idea chilled me even before I felt the wind. Julio thought we could make our way westward across the desert, evading the Carranzista patrols, to join up with the chief outside Agua Prieta.

“I’m a general,” Candelario shouted. “I’ll decide!”

Finally I butted in. “Hang on a minute there. Damn it, Candelario!—I mean, General Cervantes—can’t you just shut up for a second?”

Crossing the desert toward Agua Prieta, I said, meant we would be hemmed in between two armies who would shoot at anything that moved. Going back to Casas Grandes involved a gamble that we would find a doctor.

“We’d have no problem,” Candelario grumbled, “if you hadn’t been stupid enough to throw your rope. Not south, you say. Not west. Should we grow wings?”

“Let’s ride north.”

“Tomás, you swallowed too much of the lake. North leads to Juárez. The garrison surrendered. Treviño will honor our arrival with a firing squad.”

“But we’ll cross the border, General. Into the United States.” Scratching a map in the dirt, I began plowing up furrows with one grubby finger. “A few miles east of Columbus, I figure. Then we haul Rodolfo to a doctor in El Paso. After that we take the train to Arizona, and when Agua Prieta falls, why, we just walk across the border and meet the chief.”

Candelario clamped both my shoulders, and his good eye sparkled. “My brilliant friend! If I insulted you, forgive me. I like it—I like it a lot! I can stop off in Columbus to find Yvette and Marie-Thérése.”

Julio objected; he pointed out that the border was guarded by Pershing’s cavalry. They were supposedly friendly to us, but they wouldn’t be pleased to see twenty-odd armed Villistas whooping across with a wounded man in a wagon.

“We’ll send the soldiers back through the Pulpito,” Candelario said excitedly. “The three of us are enough to get Rodolfo to Texas. Tomás is right—he needs a decent doctor.”

There was no argument, no more talk of Fierro as a burden. When Candelario’s cock twitched, the whole man followed.

“The path is smooth

that leadeth on to danger.”

I never counted the miles I journeyed back and forth in Mexico during the years I was a revolutionist with Pancho Villa, but if I had been selling patent medicine on the way I might have made a fortune. And if I had a dollar for every time someone fired a shot in my direction, I could have retired on the interest.

Rodolfo traveled in the spring wagon with Julio driving, and by nightfall we neared the border. All that jolting across the desert didn’t help Rodolfo’s ankle, which had swelled up and had the appearance of a colorful sunset, but to give him credit he never said a word, just smoked all my supply of tobacco and sometimes bit hard on a piece of boot leather. He had fever.

Candelario wanted us to camp near Columbus so he could go north on the Deming road and find his lost whores, but when he felt Rodolfo’s head he realized there was no time now for partying or pleading.

A rusting barbed-wire fence marked the border. At dawn we cut a hole through it and then about a mile later turned eastward on a trail marked with stones. This was home—the United States—not that it looked any different from Chihuahua. We didn’t see a human face, just a few ganted steers wandering across the railroad track when we passed into Dona Ana County. To the north, the peak of Mount Riley appeared out of the morning heat haze, suspended in a golden mist.

Then the land became greener, and there were rolling hills. We must have been ten miles from El Paso in the late afternoon when the mules laid back their ears and the horses snorted uneasily.

A moment later we heard three single snaps of a rifle coming from the hills ahead of us. Julio had been sleeping on the seat of the wagon, the reins looped about his wrist. He woke up quickly, grabbing for his rifle. Candelario already had yanked his own Mauser out of the scabbard and was working the bolt.

“Take it easy!” I yelped. “This is the United States. Those might be cowboys or soldiers.”